Watch the Trailer for Marisa Abela's Amy Winehouse Biopic, 'Back to Black'

By Dustin Rowles | Film | February 2, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | February 2, 2024 |

Amy Winehouse was a brilliant and unique musician who lived a troubled life and died too young. For better (or more likely, worse), her life is the sort that can be easily adapted into a three-act structure for a musical biopic that looks about as paint-by-numbers as they come. It appears, even form the trailer, as though director Sam Taylor-Johnson has transformed Winehouse’s Wikipedia page into a movie, and I suspect that it will have all the subtlety.

Marisa Abela, who is so good in HBO’s Industry, lacks the ache, the heaviness, and the character to pull off Winehouse, although it’s hard to imagine anyone could. Winehouse lived a lot of years in her short time on Earth, and Abela looks like someone who gets a full night’s rest every day of the week. Abela has a bright future ahead of her, but this ain’t it. That said, audiences seem to gravitate toward music biopics, even the predictable and superficial (see Bohemian Rhapsody), so the Winehouse biopic may surprise us at the box office

Back to Black premieres on May 17th.